Catarina

WHERE IT STARTED…

To keep from becoming antiquated, the Columbus Dispatch newspaper split into two parts five years ago. The Dispatch still “dispatches” print newspapers, the kind that line the bottoms of canary cages for our elderly readers, but its online presence has been growing steadily over those five years, thanks in part to new blood in the office.

Thanks, mostly, to me.

Columbus Community Chat, or just the Chat if you’re an insider, is the online version of the Dispatch. Some of the articles I write also run in the actual printed paper, which is fun to see. Even though “seeing it” requires me to flip waaaay back to the relationships section of which I’m in charge.

Before you accuse me of writing fluff, let me assure you, I know my strengths. Much as I’d like to aspire to landing on the front page of the Dispatch, unless Channing Tatum becomes our next president, chances are it’s not going to happen.

I don’t attempt any feat that I’m not sure of achieving one hundred percent. That includes jobs, relationships, and every other nook and cranny of my highly organized life.

Mia Blakely, my boss, stumbles into our weekly meeting in her usual manner. Her curly hair is barely tamed, a pencil is jutting out of the brown locks just over her ear, and her brown skirt/peach blouse combo is unstylish and outdated. I’m not being unkind—just stating the facts. Mia knows her clothes are unstylish and outdated and doesn’t care at all. What she does best is run this office, run this paper, and keep us paid. She’s entrusted me with more large assignments than she has anyone else who writes for the Chat, and for that I’ll owe her my firstborn son.

“Good afternoon, kids,” she says, eyeing us over a pair of glasses with half lenses. She flips through a few scribbled-on sheets in her yellow legal pad, finds our agenda, and sits.

Megan dutifully places a mug of coffee at Mia’s right hand and Mia nods her thanks to the intern.

While Mia recaps the assignments for this summer, I jot in my planner—a black and white beauty with thick, luxurious paper and a posh striped cover—with a black gel pen, appreciating the precision of my handwriting in the “notes” section for June.

I can’t believe it’s June already. Seems like yesterday it was February and I was huddling over the space heater under my desk in an attempt to ward off Columbus’s winter chill.

“The last order of business is Catarina.” Mia smiles, peeks over her glasses again, and I smile back. “I’m changing your ‘Fun in the Sun’ column this year to something more focused on relationships. A personal relationship. Your. Personal relationship.”

I rarely blush, but I can feel heat work its way from the placket of my white blouse to my neck. I place a hand to my cheek and press my lips together, feeling my co-workers’ eyes on me.

“Oh?” It’s the only word I’m capable of at the moment.

“Dating in Summer. Summer Fling. Fling into Summer.” She makes a “help me out” motion with her hand and our writing staff begins scrawling furiously on their notepads to come up with an idea that she might like.

Carla’s suggestion of “Sex in the Summer” makes the entire table go quiet.

“That. I like.” Mia sends me a saucy wink and I bristle. “Sadly, we can’t pimp out poor Catarina.”

“Your Sexiest Summer Ever,” Adam blurts.

“Yes, but no,” Mia says. “Catarina isn’t being assigned a self-improvement article. She’s going to date a bad boy and tell our readership about it. In detail.”

I make a choking noise and force out a laugh. “Mia, with all due respect to my boyfriend, North isn’t exactly a bad boy.”

What an exaggeration. Northrop Phillips, III, is as far from bad boy as you can get. He’s a country club guy who loves golf and finance. He’s the perfect pick for a partner and that’s why I picked him. One hundred percent in everything, remember?

“Not North, Catarina. I’ve pulled in a bad boy especially for this occasion.”

The gasps around the table suck the oxygen from the room.

“I thought you weren’t pimping me out,” I say carefully.

“You don’t have to have a physical relationship with the guy.” Mia leafs through her papers again and I wonder what gives with her splitting hairs. “But you do have to pretend date him and write about it. We want our readership living vicariously through you. Think of it as an acting role.”

I blink at her. A heads-up that she wants me to “pretend” date someone before our staff meeting would’ve been nice. Then again she knows I’d have said no.

“Your cohort will be writing from his own POV on what it’s like to be the bad boy who’s committed to dating. It’s a dash of fiction, a dash of romance, and a dash of what you’re best at writing: relationships.”

“Who is it?” Nanci asks, excitement rounding her blue eyes. I’m not there yet. I’m still in shock.

“Me,” a rough voice announces from the doorway behind me.

I turn my head to look over my shoulder, stunned further into silence by the sheer attractiveness of the man standing there. He’s so good-looking it’s criminal. But then, he is—

“Barrett Fox!” Nanci says and then bursts into a series of nervous giggles.

“In the flesh.” He bends at the waist to place a kiss on Mia’s temple. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I’d expect no less,” Mia says with a smile that—yeah, is a little gooey. She bats her un-mascaraed lashes while she’s at it.

Who knew my boss had a sexual bone in her body? I thought she was made of steel beams and asbestos.

Everyone at the conference room table, save me, stands as one and moves to Barrett Fox like he has his own orbit. Mia shushes the chatter around us.

“Okay, all right. Now that you all have your assignments, let’s leave Barrett and Catarina to theirs.” She makes a shooing motion and everyone shuffles reluctantly out the door.

I slide a derisive glance to my new “co-worker” and wonder what I did to Mia to make her stick me with this assignment. Except I know exactly why she did it. Mia’s work ethic can be described in two words: bottom line. She knows a prime opportunity to bring money to this paper when she sees it.

She flips to another sheet in her yellow pad and tears it out, laying it in front of me.

“I’ll let you hash out the details.” Before she shuts the door, she adds, “Barrett. You know where to find me.”

“Sure do, doll.” He winks then takes her chair at the head of the table, leaning back and kicking up his feet.

I recoil from the blatant rudeness of that move, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Barrett Fox is known for his rude antics, and this one is tame by comparison. Unlike the photos of him I’ve seen online: sweaty, streaked in dirt, or even dressed in a suit making lewd gestures at the camera.

There’s no way to escape the popularity of the local OSU football player who went pro, especially in Columbus. This paper was built on a foundation of footballs.

He wears a crisp, white shirt tucked into dark pants, black leather shoes, and because he kicked his feet up and crossed them at the ankles, I also notice a pair of red socks with white polka dots.

“What’s your name, gorgeous?”

I reroute my gaze to his face. Sharp, angular, a deep dent in his chin. His eyelids are narrowed in assessment, but I know under those red-brown eyelashes his irises are so blue they border on turquoise.

Nanci had a calendar of him last year. I’ve seen this guy in every pose from decked out in full gear to shirtless, to the one where he’s lying on a beach, his shorts pulled down past his ass crack.

He’s long and lean, and I might have had a passing appreciation for how attractive he is if I didn’t know so much about him.

“What if I called you Ginger? Would that upset you?” I ask tartly, referring to the perfectly coiffed reddish hair on top of his head. He’s good with gel, or has his own stylist. Or maybe he’s sleeping with a stylist.

He grins at my question—straight white teeth he didn’t lose any of playing ball for eight years—and props his hands behind his head.

His shirtsleeves are uncuffed and rolled to the elbows, the scruff on his face two days past clean-shaven.

“Apologies, beautiful, but you know my name. I don’t know yours.”

“You mean Mia didn’t tell you my name when she threw me to the wolves?” I snap. I have a momentary fantasy where I talk Mia into reassigning this puff piece to Nanci, but she won’t. Nanci mostly helps out with articles. She hasn’t honed her journalistic skills well enough to be entrusted with a column.

When ad dollars are involved, Mia’s focus is ensuring a climb in readership. Not to brag, but that’s the reason I’m in charge of the relationships section. I’m good. Not because of some magic fairy dust but because I work my ass off.

Still, it would have been nice to write a commentary about how to date a real man instead of this one. A man who knows how to properly wear a button-down shirt, for example. Like North.

“Ouch. I’m guessing you’re not a fan?”

“Of you? I barely know who you are, Mr. Fox.”

“You seem to know plenty. I can read it in the pleat between those two perfect eyebrows.” He runs those blue eyes over my face, down my blouse, and lingers at my breasts.

I lift the paper Mia left behind in front of my chest to avoid further scrutiny.

“Catarina Everhart,” I say as I read over the sheet of paper in my hand. Mia’s shorthand is atrocious but after five years of practice, I can read her hieroglyphics without any problem.

“Do you go by Cat?”

“No. I don’t. Do you go by Bare?”

“Sometimes.” He shrugs, lowers his feet to the floor, and leans over the table. He flicks the back of the paper I’m using as a shield.

“Is this what ‘dating you’ is going to be like?” I sneer.

“Close.” His lips twitch at the corner. “Add in a few slow, long, wet kisses that’ll curl your toes and a little under the shirt/over the bra action, and you’re there.”

Barrett

There it is. The reaction I was going for. Catarina’s back snaps straight and she slams the paper onto the table and proceeds to lecture me. She’s saying I won’t ever touch her, let alone kiss her. She mentions a boyfriend and says that even if she didn’t have one there’s no way she’d allow me anywhere near her. As she bitches, I commit to a plan to taste those lips.

Mia told me about this “boyfriend” of hers. He was described to me as a stick-in-the-mud guy who is rude and aloof and doesn’t treat Catarina the way she deserves. I’m not sure if Mia has an ulterior motive to break up Catarina and the bozo she’s dating, but I’m not getting involved either way. My job is to date Catarina and be myself. That’s what I’m doing.

Catarina is fucking beautiful, by the way. And prissy. Rigid. Haughty. But beautiful. Long, dark brown hair with the right amount of weight and wave rolls over slender shoulders. Her white blouse is classy, like her. Even angry, her shaped eyebrows slammed together, all I can think about is erasing her moodiness by kissing her lips. They’re the pinkest, fullest lips I’ve ever seen. Pillowy. Like her breasts.

“Mr. Fox, could you do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye instead of staring at my chest?”

“Sorry, Kitty Cat. I’ll try.” I shrug helplessly. “You have a really nice rack.”

She snarls something, and I do as she asks and look at her eyes. They’re as beautiful as the rest of her. Coffee-brown and sparkling. Big and wide and taking in the world around her. Not innocent though. More jaded. This is a woman who’s seen a lot and has decided not to like most of it.

“…going to talk to Mia about this,” she announces as she stands.

I stand with her and she turns and pokes me in the center of my chest with one short, polished fingernail.

“Alone.”

“I’m on assignment here, too, Kitty Cat.”

“Stop calling me that. I don’t care how much money you’ll bring to this paper. I’m not pretending to date you. I can’t stand looking at you.”

With that she opens the conference room door and storms through the office. I watch her go, enjoying the wiggle of her small, round ass in that superslim skirt.

I catch the eye of the cute blonde who was in here a moment ago. She’s still mooning. She bites her lip and gives me a little wave. I wink at her, knowing that made her panties damp. I can tell by the way she pressed her knees together.

Whistling, I amble in the direction of Mia’s office in hot pursuit of Catarina Everhart.

Damn.

I love being me.